Several generations passed away, during which the affairs of the Holy Land created no interest in Europe, and when Christians and Jews, who could hardly obtain the most limited toleration from their Mohammedan masters, sought an asylum among the states of Europe. In the Travels of Benjamin of Tudela are to be found some incidental notices which leave no doubt as to the fact that his countrymen, unable to bear the persecution directed against them, had gradually abandoned the birthplace of their fathers. Jerusalem, in the twelfth century, did not contain more than two hundred descendants of Abraham, poor, depressed, and calumniated; while at Tiberias, the seat of learning and of their sovereign patriarch, the number did not exceed fifty,--the victims of suspicion and jealousy, not less on the part of the Christians than of the Moslem, who had already begun to contend with each other for the sepulchre of Christ. It has often been observed, that pilgrimage to the holy places of Palestine was from a very early period regarded as at once a wholesome discipline and an acceptable reverence on the part of Christian worshippers. The Arabian califs were, on various accounts, inclined to favour the resort of Europeans to these shrines of their faith. They saw in it a fruitful source of revenue; while, as the progeny of Abraham, they were not disposed to take offence at the veneration lavished upon the prophetic son of David, whose tomb the fortune of war had placed in their hands. But the Seljukian Turks, those irreclaimable barbarians, who had no sympathy with the believers in Christ, laid on them such burdens and vexatious restraints as were altogether intolerable. The cries of the unhappy pilgrims had long resounded throughout all Christendom; and the indignation which was universally felt against the bigoted Mussulmans was inflamed in no slight degree by the eloquence of Peter the Hermit, who had witnessed in foreign lands the afflictions of his brethren. Yielding to the impulse of the age, Pope Urban the Second convoked a general council at Clermont, in Auvergne, to whom he addressed an oration well fitted to confirm the enthusiasm which he found already kindled. He encouraged them to attack the enemies of God, and in that holy warfare to earn the reward of eternal life promised to all the faithful servants of the Redeemer; suggesting, that as a mark of their profession as well as of their Saviour's love, they should wear red crosses on their garments when fighting the battles of Christianity.